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End of the Beginning

Entry 310, on 2006-04-06 at 14:17:25 (Rating 1, Computers)

About a week ago I made a blog entry titled "The Beginning of the End". In it, I predicted the collapse of Microsoft's monopoly and suggested we were seeing the beginning of that process now, especially because of the continuing debacle related to the release of Vista. Today Apple announced a product, currently named "Boot Camp". Its the first official, and straightforward way, to run Windows on a Mac. Previous attempts at this suffered from various problems, including complex installation and poor performance.

I haven't installed and tested this yet, but all indications are that Macs should run Windows really well - better than PCs in some cases. Apple have been going through a major advance in acceptance and respect recently, a process which started with the iMac, then Mac OS X, then the iPod, and finally the transition to Intel processors. This last step - running Windows - is the completion of this process. From here on we should see Apple succeed to a much greater extent in capturing market share. That's why I call this the end of the beginning.

How is this going to work? Circumstantial evidence indicates there are many current PC users who don't like their PCs much and would like to use something else, but they are worried they won't be able to use their familiar software and hardware. On an Intel Mac booting Windows they can maintain this compatibility, but also enjoy the Mac experience: superior user interface, better security, faster upgrade cycles, etc.

Some people have suggested Apple should just switch to Windows as their OS, and abandon Mac OS X. This is insane. Why would they want to switch to an OS which is currently in crisis mode? But if people are just going to run Windows on their Mac anyway, what's the point if developing Mac OS X?

I think many people will buy a Mac because of the ability to run Windows, but they won't actually use it. For a start they might use Windows a bit, but they will soon realise that most tasks are far better on a Mac, and gradually Windows will be used less and less. The next time their Windows partition on their Mac is hit with a virus (because it will happen, even if the Mac part is immune) they will probably just not bother fixing it, and stick with Mac OS X.

This seems like an ideal mechanism to get more switchers. Many people think they need Windows, but very few actually do. I often hear statements like "I need a PC to run PC software". When I ask which software that is they either don't know, or say something like Microsoft Office. So in many cases the reason for using Windows is invalid. Dual booting, or running two systems via virtualisation, will give people a chance to discover this for themselves. So, they way I see it, this really is both the beginning of the end, and the end of the beginning!

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